Language as pre-emptive image management — the mental chess of triaging responses before speaking, and the…
echoes
From: Bookworm — DFW on Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (KCRW, August 12, 1999)
- Early text:
[scene] The mental-chess account: before saying the
thing he already scans and triages the other's possible responses, his
responses to those responses, and the portraits each will form of the
other — articulate foresight deployed to manage exposure rather than to
make contact [25:18]. Enacted in the book he is describing: the craven
breakup monologues he admits to having delivered in his 20s, fluent
performances that reframe abandonment as the partner's burden [21:12];
and his refusal to state moral beliefs on air as a worked example of
eloquence withheld to control reception [25:39]
- IJ echo: the oeuvre-wide language-behavior preoccupation this slug
tracks — Hal's articulate interior behind an unreadable exterior, the
professional-conversationalist scene (scene 005), Marathe–Steeply's verbal
fencing; on the pre-IJ side the Here and There / My Appearance /
Broom chain already registered
- Weight: shared-preoccupation